The Essence of Diets - Part One - POSTED ON: Mar 02, 2011
I’ve been thinking a great deal about the essence of Diets. The term “diet” is defined as Habitual Nourishment.
The term “calorie” is the term used to measure the energy value inside food, i.e. the unit equivalent to the energy-producing amount of food when oxidized in the body. In order for the human body to become a smaller size by losing bodyfat, that body must take in less energy than it uses.
I have read hundreds of diet books, and been on many, many weight-loss diets. Each of them appears to be some variation of a way to “EAT LESS and MOVE MORE”. One of the things I find fascinating about Gary Taubes’ books, one of which is now featured here in the section BOOKTALK. is that in one way his concept seems to break that mold……and yet in another way…the concept seems to fit into it.
I’m going to share some thoughts about this here. Then at some future time, I plan to share some further personal insights on this matter. It seems clear to me that there are essentially 3 issues involved in all Diets, One main food issue, AMOUNT, and two sub-issues, KIND and FREQUENCY.
AMOUNT -- of food eaten –
KIND – fundamental nature (micronutrients) of food eaten .
FREQUENCY of eating food.
RESTRICTIONS: All Diets involving weight-loss or maintenance of weight-loss place restrictions on one or more of those 3 food issues.
AMOUNT – This can involve either DIRECT or INDIRECT restriction.
DIRECT restriction involving AMOUNT, some Examples include:
Counting food calories with the goal of staying near a certain number. Counting food points. Portion control – eating a specific size of a food substance Counting bites 1 plate, no seconds -as in The No S Diet. Meal size restrictions – i.e. large Lunch, other meals smaller, etc. Variation of Amounts on alternating days - QOD, JUDDD, Calorie Cycling, Fast-5 .............are actually Blends of the Amount and Frequency categories.
INDIRECT restriction involving AMOUNT This involves restricting the KIND of food eaten, and/or the FREQUENCY of eating food.
KIND – This involves a DIRECT restriction of KIND, resulting in an INDIRECT restriction on the total AMOUNT of food calories. DIRECT restriction of KIND usually involves a shift in the balance of the intake of various food micronutrients. Reduction of KIND frequently involves a flavor/taste reduction or satiation factor that results in less overall food intake.
Some Examples of restriction involving KIND include:
FREQUENCY – This involves a DIRECT Restriction on eating FREQUENCY, resulting in an INDIRECT restriction on the total AMOUNT of total food calories.
Some Examples of restriction involving FREQUENCY include:
I'll be writing more about this concept in the future.
An Individual Fit - POSTED ON: Mar 01, 2011
An individual Fit is necessary when it comes to Diets or Lifestyles.
Have you thought that if you did just what someone else does, you would look just like them? Yet when you try to copy their choice of foods and fitness activities, you’re miserable.
Then when you stop doing it, you feel like you failed. You didn't fail. It was just a bad lifestyle fit. Each of us is an individual on our own journey, and none of us are exactly alike. Some people need to follow a specific eating plan and have foods they never eat again. A Plan like this makes some people feel deprived and leads to binge eating. Some people need to eat smaller quantities of what they want at frequent times, while taking extra care to carefully log that food into their trackers.
I don’t like any outside control on my eating behavior I hate having well-meaning people ask: "Should you be eating that?" Others aren’t any more right or more wrong than me. We all want to save ourselves from obesity, and there are many options available. The secret is to find what works for each one of us personally. There is a lot of advice out there from the weight loss industry. So many “medical discoveries” happening in the field, So many magazines promoting “new miracle diets”, So many tips and tricks.
Now Obesity is considered an epidemic but there’s no vaccination…no one-cure-fits-all fix. Each of us has to find our own way. We know some basics of calories-in and calories-out which is one starting point of our physical problem. However genetic, psychological, character-related, disease-related, and other problems, are involved as well. These are all variables which cause more than one problem and require more than one solution.
Note that in “Why We Get Fat And What To Do About It” by Gary Taubes, the basic belief in calories-in/calories-out is even termed the "Original Sin”.
What works for me may not work for you. What works for you might not work for me.
Each of us wants to find a way to change our life without severely disrupting it. That’s a tough Goal. To accomplish that, we need to gather as much information as is possible, and make changes that work best individually.
How do you know what fits you personally, and how do you push out of your comfort zone?
I’ve heard that the change should fit into your life the way you try to fit a puzzle piece in place. Keep turning it around and trying it at different angles to see if that’s the right one. If it isn’t, it will never go in place, so try another.
No Diet is one-size-fits-all. No single answer will solve everyone’s problems with obesity. If you’re still fat, you aren’t a failure, you just haven’t found your own answer yet. Just keep searching.
What is the Best Way To Diet? - POSTED ON: Feb 27, 2011
There are many different diets, ways-of-eating, and lifestyles. I believe that each of us has to find his or her own way.
All of the Weight-Loss/Maintenance research and theories contain flaws, and each of us is individually conducting an Experiment of One. I totally agree with the following quote by an online forum member.
"You see a lot of contradiction in diet books and on diet blogs and message boards. Some people will tell you to eat certain foods, others tell you to stay away from them, eat six meals, or maybe just three meals, do aerobics, avoid aerobics, take these pills, don't take any pills. Nobody's right. Everyone's right. You have to think of a diet as a trip home for Thanksgiving -- it's a personal destination and you should know better than anybody how to get there. If you're driving east on the highway heading home for Thanksgiving, you'll see a lot of cars driving west. If the person in the passenger seat said, "There's a lot of people heading home for the holiday," you wouldn't turn to that person and flip out and say, "What the hell! What a bunch of retards! Don't they know home is this way?" But that is what diet writing often is -- people arguing over how to get home."
"You see a lot of contradiction in diet books and on diet blogs and message boards. Some people will tell you to eat certain foods, others tell you to stay away from them, eat six meals, or maybe just three meals, do aerobics, avoid aerobics, take these pills, don't take any pills.
Nobody's right. Everyone's right.
You have to think of a diet as a trip home for Thanksgiving -- it's a personal destination and you should know better than anybody how to get there.
If you're driving east on the highway heading home for Thanksgiving, you'll see a lot of cars driving west.
If the person in the passenger seat said, "There's a lot of people heading home for the holiday," you wouldn't turn to that person and flip out and say, "What the hell! What a bunch of retards! Don't they know home is this way?"
But that is what diet writing often is -- people arguing over how to get home."
My First Cooking Videos - POSTED ON: Feb 24, 2011
In a previous Blog, A Thousand Words AND Pictures, I shared about my video adventures. Those Videos are now all posted here on DietHobby.
In yesterday's Blog, When Life Takes You In A Different Direction, I posted my Book Discussion Announcement Video.
My Cooking Videos are posted under RECIPES. You can access them from the links at the right-side-top-of-the-main-page or from the Recipes drop-down menu.
You can also find them under RESOURCES..... Videos.......Cooking Videos
Here's one of them.
You Can Choose to Think Differently. - POSTED ON: Feb 22, 2011
Someone who is still Fat recently told me that they didn't want Thoughts about Weight/Food/Exercise to "Rule their Life".
I had no way to Help them toward that Goal of Mindlessness, because Thoughts about Weight/Food/Exercise have ALWAYS "Ruled MY Life."
I did not spend any less time Thinking about those issues when I was Fat than I do now. The difference is that when I was Fat my Thoughts were not accompanied by Action, while during my weight-loss period ...and now inside Maintenance... my Thoughts about those issues are now more positive and productive.
I frequently hear things like: “I don’t want to THINK about my eating.” “I don’t want to be obsessed with thoughts of food.”
Terms like Diet Mentality or Diet Head are commonly usedto denote the negative feelings people have abouttheir need to monitor their eating behavior for weight-control. All of us tend to seek the easier, softer way. and almost all Diets promise us one. Dieting is treated as a matter of “get in…get out”.Find the problem..fix it. ..and then “get on with your life:. which implies that once you’ve remedied the problemthat you can “leave it behind”.
Most diet book authors tell us that they have faced a weight problemeither themselves personally or as medical professionals, …sometimes both………and that they have found a solution, and they are writing that book to tell you what it is.
Perhaps they are writing for their own personal fulfillment or perhaps for financial profit. Still, they want to tell you what to do to FIX your problem. …and in the dieting world, fixing your problem means getting rid of fat.
Do you have a physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual problem? No matter, despite the source, or the reason…. A Solution is promised. A Solution is the answer to a problem. A Solution resolves, finalizes, and eliminates the problem.
But Life IS continuous. The end of life is Death. And eating will always be a major part of life, whether or not eating is a thoughtful conscious process.
The dieting promises of a “Solution” are illusory. The Goal of getting thin and arriving at a place where eating is primarily “unconscious”.is an very ineffective goal, because for a reduced obese person,unconscious eating invariably results in fat gain.
I’ve replaced that Goal with one less impracticable.My current Goal is to continue putting forth the consistent effort that it takes to maintain my weight-loss.This means I plan to keep using my mind to control my body’s food-intake.
I choose to think Differently about the dieting process. I don’t use negative terms like Diet Mentality and Diet Head. I’ve chosen to make all those issues part of a positive DietHobby. I changed my mind…from negative to positive.
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